This invention relates to cabinetry and particularly to the art of joining two pieces of wood, such as two boards, by means of dowels.
In doweling two pieces of wood together, matching holes are bored in the two pieces and a dowel, usually of wood, is pressed into the hole in one piece, then fitted into the hole in the other piece, using glue to secure the dowel. In boring the hole in one of the pieces a drill jig can be used so that the hole is bored truly perpendicular to the plane of the edge. The match location for a hole in the other piece is then found by measuring the position of the first-bored hole and transferring the measurement to the second piece to be bored. A drill jig can then be used to bore the hole.
The procedure is more involved when, for example, in assembling the rails and styles of a door, and pair of dowels are used at each corner of the door. These two dowel holes near the end of a style of the door must be drilled exactly perpendicular to the edge of the piece, and their distance apart and from the end of the piece must then be measured exactly. Then the mirror-image measurements must be transformed to the rail to be joined by dowel pins. If a drill jig is used to drill the style or first piece it cannot be used to drill the rail without preliminary manual measurements because the hole measurements are not duplicates but mirror images of the first piece or style measurements.
Thus presently available portable drill jigs are useful in drilling the first piece but cannot be used without manual measuring to drill the second piece. All of the holes in the second piece must be marked for drilling by careful measurement of the first piece, after drilling, and the measurements must be carefully transferred manually, as mirror-image measurements, to the second piece. This measurement and marking must be meticulously accurate, and may be beyond the skill of all but the best cabinet makers.